Another Good Sign for Induced Pluripotency

Induced pluripotent stem cells - cells reprogrammed to exhibit self-renewal and the ability to differentiate into any type cell - are beginning to look like good replacements for embryonic stem cells in regenerative medicine. If this pans out, it will result in large cost reductions in sourcing cells for use. Any skin cell sample from a patient can be reprogrammed to be pluripotent via present methods, meaning it can in theory be used as the foundation to build new tissue and replacement cell populations that have no risk of immune rejection.

Here is another recent demonstration to show that induced pluripotent cells might be all they are hoped to be:

Researchers at the Buck Institute for Age Research have successfully used human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to treat rodents afflicted with Parkinson's Disease (PD). The research, which validates a scalable protocol that the same group had previously developed, can be used to manufacture the type of neurons needed to treat the disease and paves the way for the use of iPSCs in various biomedical applications.

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Researchers in the Zeng lab used human iPSCs that were derived from skin and blood cells and coaxed them to become dopamine-producing neurons. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter produced in the mid-brain which facilitates many critical functions, including motor skills. Patients with PD lack sufficient dopamine; the disease is a progressive, incurable neurodegenerative disorder that affects 1.5 million Americans and results in tremor, slowness of movement and rigidity.

Researchers transplanted the iPSC-derived neurons into rats that had mid-brain injury similar to that found in human PD. The cells became functional and the rats showed improvement in their motor skills. Zeng said this is the first time iPSC-derived cells have been shown to engraft and ameliorate behavioral deficits in animals with PD. Dopamine-producing neurons derived from hESCs have been demonstrated to survive and correct behavioral deficits in PD in the past. "Both our functional studies and genomic analyses suggest that overall iPSCs are largely similar to hESCs," said Zeng.

Which is good news. The cost of research and later the cost of producing therapies is a large factor in determining the pace of progress. Cheaper means faster.

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